Solid Soul

Chapter 3

“You actually invited Marcus and his father for dinner on Sunday!”

Kylie lifted a brow as she washed her hands in the kitchen sink. Surprised at the excitement she heard in her daughter’s voice, she turned to meet her gaze. “I take it that you don’t have a problem with it.”

The enthusiasm in Tiffany’s voice dropped a degree when she shrugged her shoulders and said, “No, why should I? Just as long as you and Mr. Steele aren’t going to try and break us up, because it won’t happen. Marcus and I are—”

“Madly in love,” Kylie rushed in to finish, stifling her anger as she dried her hands. “I know.” If she heard her daughter exclaim the depth of her love for Marcus Steele one more time she would scream.

“I thought it would be a good idea for me to finally meet Marcus, considering how you feel about him,” Kylie said.

“Why is Mr. Steele coming?”

“Because he’s Marcus’s father and, like me, he wants what’s best for his child.”

“Oh, then, he won’t have to worry about a thing because I am the best.”

Kylie rolled her eyes thinking her daughter was getting conceited lately—another of Sam’s traits rearing its ugly head.

“So the two of you have been talking a lot?”

Kylie frowned as she began making the pancakes for breakfast. “The two of who?”

“You and Mr. Steele.”

“More than we’ve wanted to, I’m sure,” Kylie said with forced calmness. The last thing her daughter needed to know was just what an impact Chance Steele was having on her. Just as she’d figured last night, she hadn’t been able to go back to sleep without visions of him dancing around in her head.

“How does he look?”

Many of the descriptive words that came to mind she couldn’t possibly share with her daughter. “He’s handsome, so I take it that Marcus is handsome, too.”

Tiffany beamed. “Yes, of course.” Then seconds later she said, “I heard Mr. Steele is nice.”

Kylie expelled a deep breath. “I don’t know him well enough to form an opinion but I have no reason to think that he’s not.” Although she pretended nonchalance, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing over at Tiffany and asking, “Who told you he was nice?”

“Marcus. He thinks the world of his father.”

Kylie’s first reaction at hearing that statement was to ask why, if Marcus thought the world of his dad, he was causing Chance so much grief.

“He doesn’t date much.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Steele.”

With his good looks and fine body, Kylie found that hard to believe. “Don’t you think you need to start getting dressed for school?” she prompted, not wanting to discuss Chance any longer.

Tiffany nodded. “I’ll be back in time for pancakes,” she said as she rushed out of the kitchen.

When she was gone, Kylie leaned against the counter wondering why Chance had dominated their conversation. Was there a possibility that Tiffany was nervous about meeting Marcus’s father? She couldn’t help but remember the first time Sam had taken her to meet his parents. They hadn’t been impressed with her and hadn’t wasted any time letting her and Sam know they thought the two of them were too young to be involved.

Too bad she hadn’t taken the Millers’s opinion seriously. How differently things would have turned out if she had. But then she could never regret having Tiffany in her life, even now when her daughter was determined to make her hair gray early.

So, she thought as she pulled the orange juice out of the refrigerator, Chance didn’t date often. Rather interesting…

Chance leaned back in the chair and stared out his office window. Instead of reading the report from the research-and-development department, he was sitting at his desk thinking of a reason to call Kylie Hagan. After that dream last night, he had awoken obsessed with hearing her voice.

Gut-twisting emotions clawed through him. It was bad enough that his son was totally besotted with the daughter, now it seemed he was becoming obsessed with the mother. He hadn’t even managed to brush his teeth this morning without Kylie consuming his thoughts. He gritted those same teeth, not liking the position he was in one damn bit.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t dated since Cyndi’s death. But he quickly admitted that Kylie was different from any woman he’d taken out. She had a strong, independent nature that he admired. She had raised her child alone and when times had gotten tough with the downsizing of her job, she had made what she’d felt were the best decisions for the both of them. Even considering all of that, he still wondered what about her had not only grabbed his attention but was holding it tight. Could it be that now that he was getting older with a son who would be leaving for college in a couple of years, the thought of being alone scared him? Of course, he had his brothers, but they had their own lives.

Sebastian was the corporation’s problem solver and troubleshooter. The Steele Corporation was more than just a company to Bas; it was his lifeline. Bas had been the last brother to join the company, and of the four, he had been the one to give their parents the most grief while growing up. Cutting school on a regular basis had been minor considering the other things he’d done. His reputation for getting into mischief was legendary. Trouble had seemed to find Bas, even when he wasn’t looking for it. His engagement had mystified his brothers since he was the last Steele anyone would have thought would want to tie the knot.

Then there was Morgan, who headed R & D. Although he dated, everyone teased Morgan about holding out for the perfect woman. So far he hadn’t found a woman who qualified for the role, although he was convinced one existed.

Last but not least was Donovan, who women claimed could seduce them with his voice alone. The youngest of the Steele brothers headed product administration, but unlike Bas, who was married to the corporation, Donovan always managed to carve out some play time.

“It doesn’t look like you’re busy, big brother, so I’ll just come in.”

Chance turned his head and watched as Bas entered his office. He sat up, a little surprised that anyone, including his brother, had made it past his secretary without being announced. “Where’s Joanna?” he asked. It was a rare occurrence for Joanna Cabot to leave her post without advising him.

Bas smiled. “Just where is your mind today, Chance? Have you forgotten that Robert Parker is retiring and today’s his last day in sales? We were all at the celebration downstairs and wondering where you were. I made an excuse for you by telling everyone you probably had gotten detained on an important call.”

Chance muttered a low curse. He had forgotten about Robert’s retirement party. Robert had been part of the Steele Corporation when their father, Lester Steele, had run things. Now their retired parents were living the life in the Keys, doing all the things they’d always dreamed of doing, and had left the family business in the hands of their capable sons and niece.

“Yes, I’d forgotten about it.”

Bas leaned against the closed door. “Umm, and you were just talking about it yesterday, which makes me wonder what’s weighing so heavily on your mind.”

Chance stood and quickly slipped into his suit jacket. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Bas scowled. “You aren’t losing sleep over that Marcus affair, are you? You are chilling like we told you to do, right?”

Chance decided not to tell Bas that the Marcus affair had conveniently become his own personal affair, thanks to Tiffany Hagan’s mother. “Yes, I’m chilling.”

Bas laughed. “You wouldn’t know how to chill if your life depended on it.”

Chance rolled his eyes, grinning. “Look who’s talking.”

It was a couple of hours later that Chance arrived back in his office. A part of him was still obsessed with hearing Kylie’s voice. Deciding not to fight it any longer, he pulled out his wallet to find the business card she had given him the other day at the café. He picked up the phone, then put it back down. Damn, he wanted to do more than talk to her. He wanted to see her.

He reached for the phone and punched in the number to connect with his secretary. “Ms. Cabot, I’m leaving early today. If an emergency comes up you can reach me on my cell phone.”

Strategy and tact were the methods he’d mentioned to Kylie for bringing their children around. Little did she know he was about to apply that same technique on her.

Kylie turned at the sound of the shop door opening with a smile of greeting on her lips. The smile quickly faded when she saw it was the one man who had invaded her dreams last night.

She took a calming breath, remembering her reaction the first time she’d seen him when he’d walked through her door two days ago. Nothing had changed. Dressed in another power-house business suit, he looked drop-dead gorgeous.

She tried not to stare at him like a love-struck teenager, but found she was helpless in doing so. Chance Steele wasn’t just any man. He was the one man who had started her blood circulating again in some very intimate places. He was definitely a man who was the very epitome of everything male.

“Hi,” she said, deciding to break the silence when they just stood there staring at each other.

“Hi.” He then glanced around. “You’re not busy.”

“No, the lunch crowd has come and gone.”

“Oh. Would you like to go out?”

She raised a brow. “Out where?”

“To lunch.”

Surprise flickered in the depths of Kylie’s dark eyes. “To lunch?”

“Yes,” he said, giving her a smile that made her stomach clench. “Would you go to lunch with me?”

“Why? Do we need to talk about the kids again?”

“No.”

That single word sent her mind into a spin. He wanted to take her out but not to talk about the kids. Then what on earth would they talk about?

Chance must have seen the question in her eyes because he said, “I discovered something very important yesterday at the café, Kylie.”

“What?”

“I enjoyed your company a lot. A whole lot.” Then as an afterthought, he added, “I don’t date often.”

His confession was the same as Tiffany had said that very morning. Although she knew it probably wasn’t good manners, Kylie couldn’t help asking, “Why?”

He shrugged. “For a number of reasons but I can probably sum it up in one rationale.”

“Which is?”

“Lack of interest.”

Kylie knew all about lack of interest. She’d been dealing with it for over fifteen years. She hadn’t wanted the drama of getting into a hot and heavy relationship with someone, nor had she wanted to expose Tiffany to the drama, either. “Oh, I see.”

“Do you?”

Nervously, Kylie stared down at her hands, confused by a lot of questions, the main one being why she was more attracted to Chance than any other man. She lifted her head. “Then maybe I don’t see after all.”

Her heart began racing when he started crossing the room. When he came to a stop directly in front of her, he placed his finger under her chin, lifting her gaze to meet his. “In that case, for us to go to lunch together is a rather good idea.”

She was warmed by his touch. “Why would you think that?”

“Because it would make things easier for us on Sunday if we were honest with ourselves about a few things now.”

Kylie’s eyes clung to his, knowing he was right. There was no need to play dumb. There was something happening between them that she didn’t need or want, but it was happening anyway. And they needed to get it out in the open, talk about it and put a stop to it before it went any further. How could they help their kids battle lust when they’d found themselves in the same boat?

She drew in a deep breath. “All right, if you’ll give me a second, I need to close up and put the Out to Lunch sign on the door.”

He nodded. “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

Chance stood to the side while Kylie went about closing her shop. His eyes roamed over her with more than mild intensity. For some reason, today she looked even younger than she had the other days. She was wearing shorts and a top again, and he thought her legs were just as shapely as he remembered and her body just as curvy.

He couldn’t help the desire that quickly escalated to extreme hunger and hit him in the gut. For one intense moment, he felt a burning desire to walk across the room and take her mouth with his. The need to taste her was driving him insane.

“I’m ready.”

He blinked, realizing she had spoken. He inhaled a calming breath and fought for composure. He was ready, too, but doubted they were ready for the same thing.

“One of these days I’ll take you to a place that serves something other than hamburgers and fries.”

Kylie smiled as he led the way to their table. To save time they had decided to grab a quick lunch at Burger King. “I don’t mind,” she said, as butterflies began floating around in her stomach. Did he realize he’d just insinuated that he would be taking her out again?

“It’s not too crowded,” he said, pulling the chair out for her.

“No, I guess the lunch crowd has come and gone.”

“Which is fine with me. Before I go order, I think I need to do this.” He pulled off his tie and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket. Then he reached for the top of his shirt and worked a couple of buttons through the holes. “I’m a little too overdressed for this place.”

Kylie watched as he walked off toward the counter, thinking that an overdressed Chance was the last thing on her mind. Thoughts of an undressed Chance seemed to be cemented into her brain. In a suit it he looked handsome, professional and suave. And she would bet that even in a pair of jeans and a shirt he would look rugged and sexy. She didn’t want to think about how he would look without any clothes on at all. But she had, several times, day and night, and that wasn’t good.

It didn’t take long for him to return and they began digging into their food. It was only when they were halfway through their meal that Chance spoke. He leaned in close, smiled and said, “I was wondering about something.”

“What?”

“Since we’ve assigned ourselves the task of monitoring our kids’ behavior, to make sure they stay out of trouble, whom should we assign to do the same thing for us?”

Chapter 4

That was a good question, Kylie thought as she held Chance’s gaze from across the table. Who would make sure the two of them stayed out of trouble?

The smile on Chance’s lips matched the one in his eyes. Still, she knew that, like her, Chance realized this was a serious discussion. A part of her wished she could forget that he was Marcus’s father and that they’d met because of their children. But she couldn’t forget, even while her attention focused on nothing but the shape of his mouth. It taunted her to lean in and cop a taste.

She drew in a deep breath, trying to regain control, and got a sniff of his cologne. The manly scent of him was unnerving, totally sexy.

“Don’t look at me like that, Kylie.”

She blinked and saw more than a bare hint of challenge in his eyes. She didn’t have to wonder just how she’d been looking at him. The throb between her legs told the whole story and then some. It was a deep ache and it was all she could do from asking him to relieve her of her pain.

She was astounded with her lack of strength where Chance was concerned and wished she could ignore how he made her feel, dismiss the longings he stirred inside of her. But at the moment she couldn’t. At least not while her heart was beating a mile a minute and the heat was taking her body to an intolerable degree.

Regardless, she knew she had to fight temptation and take control. She wasn’t a lustful teenager. She was a grown woman of thirty-one. A woman with a teenage daughter she should be concerned about. Tiffany was important. Tiffany was the only thing that mattered.

With all the strength she could muster, she broke eye contact and busied herself with pulling napkins out of the holder. “I don’t want this, Chance,” she said, knowing he knew full well what she meant.

He nodded. “To be honest with you, I don’t want it, either, Kylie. So tell me how we can stop it.”

She shrugged. It wasn’t as if she had any answers. She was definitely lurking in uncharted territory. The only thing she knew was that around him she had the tendency to feel things she’d never felt before. No man had ever made her breathless, excited and hot. When it came to the opposite sex, she felt just as inexperienced as her daughter. Oh, sure, she’d engaged in sex before, and at the time she’d thought it was pretty good, once she’d gotten beyond the pain. But Sam had been just as young and inexperienced as she had been, and she figured what she’d always thought of as satisfaction was nothing more than an appeasement of her curiosity and the elation of finally reaching womanhood at the hands of someone she thought she loved.

But she wanted more than that for Tiffany. More than teenage lust eroding what could be a wonderful experience with the man she married. That was the reason she was sitting here, a little past one, with the sexiest man alive. It wasn’t about them. It was about their children. They needed to realize that and get back on track.

“I think the first thing we should do is to remember the reason we’re here in the first place. You have a business to run and so do I, but our kids take top priority. Nothing else. My wants and needs have always come second to my daughter’s and things will continue to be that way, Chance.”

She paused briefly before she continued. “It’s going to take the two of us working together to keep things from going crazy between Tiffany and Marcus. Shifting our concentration from them to us will not only make us lose focus, but will have us making some of the same mistakes they’d be making.”

“So, you’re suggesting that we pretend we don’t have urges and that we aren’t attracted to each other? You think it will be that easy?” he asked.

The frustration in his tone matched her own feelings. “No, it won’t be easy, Chance. To be quite honest with you, it will probably be the hardest thing I’ve had to do in fifteen years.”

She thought about the men in her past who had shown interest in her and how she’d sent them away without a moment’s hesitation. There had been that new guy at work who tried hitting on her several times; then there was that guy who worked at the post office who had enjoyed flirting with her. Not to mention that handsome man at the grocery store who gave her that “I want to get to know you” smile. But none of them had piqued her interest like Chance had. None of them had offered any temptation. Chance was too incredibly sexy for his own good. Even worse, he was a pretty nice guy.

“We have to keep our heads,” she said. “Or the kids will take advantage without us realizing it.” Kylie hoped—prayed—that he wouldn’t give her any hassles. They needed to be in accord. They needed to be a team with one focus.

He leaned over the table, closer to her. “I know you’re right but…”

She lifted an arched brow. “But what?”

“At this very moment, the only thing I want is to kiss you.”

His blatant honesty, as well as the heat of his gaze, burned her. She could actually feel the flame. His softly uttered words only intensified the throbbing between her legs, and made fiery sensations rip through her stomach. It wouldn’t take much for her to lean in to him and mesh her lips with his, satisfy at least one craving they evidently both had. And without any control, her body began doing just that, leaning closer…

They jumped apart at the sound of a car backfiring. Kylie’s eyes widened and her cheeks tinted with embarrassment. They were sitting in the middle of Burger King thinking of sharing a kiss, for heaven’s sake!

“Are you ready to go?” Chance asked.

Kylie drew in a deep breath. Yes, she was ready. The sooner she got back to the shop the better. There, she could regain her sensibilities, take back control of her mind. No doubt Chance had more experience dealing with this sort of thing than she did. Regardless, she knew she couldn’t depend on him to keep things in perspective. An affair with Chance was the last thing she wanted. No matter what, she had to remember that.